Whistle While You Whittle

There's a catchy tune about, "Whistle while you work." Doesn't pertain to me as I can't whistle. Never have, never will. But work? Yeah, I do that.

Some people think writing isn't work. "After all," they say, "what do you do all day? Just sit there and daydream, right?"

Not really.

Sure, I imagine the scenes. That part is fun. But then comes the part of trying to transfer from my mind to the paper in the way I want it to come across. That's the working part, the hard part. Because then I'm stretching and straining, trying to reach for those elusive words, those 'just right' words that tells you, the reader, what I'm trying to say.

And I have to do it in such a way that you can't even suppose I struggled for thirty minutes or more searching for that gold-mine word. One word. Yeah, often it takes me that long to feel good about what I've just written.

I especially recall one particular paragraph I wrote for my upcoming release, "It's Elementary, My Dear Winifred." The paragraph is maybe only five sentences long. It took me three days to write it.

That was work.

So I don't write a book in chunks. It might be that today I wrote a good sentence, or maybe I edited out that comma yesterday. Whatever. Each little bit adds together to make a whole, but that's how it "works" for me...by whittling away at a story until it's finished.

And since I can't whistle, then I shout in victory.